Shanghai is a major city in China, located at the Yangtze River's southern estuary. Its name means "on the sea," and it originated as a fishing village before being founded as Qinglong Town in 746 AD. Shanghai was upgraded from a village to a market town in 1074 and became a county in 1292, and a city wall was built in 1554 to protect the town from Japanese wokou pirates. Shanghai became an important seaport under the Qing dynasty, and the Kangxi Emperor reversed the Ming's 1525 ban on oceangoing vessels in 1684. In 1732, Shanghai became the seat of the customs office for Jiangsu province and became the major trade part for all of the lower Yangtze region in 1735. During the First Opium War, British forces occupied the city, and it became a treaty port in 1842, opening it to international trade. Britain, France, and the United States were granted concessions outside the walled city. Although the Small Swords Society captured the Chinese-held Old City in 1853, the Qing regained control of it in 1855. From 1860 to 1862, Taiping rebels twice attacked the city and devastated its suburbs, but they failed to take the city. In 1895, the end of the First Sino-Japanese War enabled Japan to acquire a concession in Shanghai and build the city's first factories. In 1912, the Republic of China dismantled the Old City walls to enable the city's expansion. In 1921, the Chinese Communist Party was founded in the French Concession, and the shooting of a Chinese worker by a Japanese foreman in 1925 led to the May Thirtieth Movement, which generated a left-wing nationalist movement in China. In April 1927, the Kuomintang violently purged the city of its communists and leftists in the Shanghai massacre, killing up to 10,000 people, including short-haired women who had not been subjected to footbinding. On 7 July 1927, Shanghai was elevated to a municipality and separated from Jiangsu. Shanghai became a cosmopolitan city, as 20,000 White Russians fled to the city in the 1920s and 1930s, and 30,000 European Jews took refuge in the city during the 1930s. In January 1932, Japanese troops invaded Shanghai in the January 28 incident, destroying 10,000 shops and hundreds of catories and buildings and killing or wounding 18,000 civilians. In 1937, the Battle of Shanghai devastated the city, and the Japanese would occupy the foreign concessions on 8 December 1941 and commit several war crimes. Jewish refugees were confined to the Shanghai Ghetto until it was liberated by the Chinese on 3 September 1945. On 27 May 1949, Shanghai fell to the People's Liberation Army, resulting in most foreign firms moving to Hong Kong. Shanghai's economy recovered as its agricultural and industrial output shot up from 1949 to 1952, and Shanghai expanded to 10 urban districts and 10 counties by 1964. Shanghai's skilled industrial workers mobilized during the 1950s, forming Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution and dismantling economic organizations in the city. In 1990, Deng Xiaoping permitted Shanghai to reintroduce foreign capital to the city, and it became one of the world's leading economic centers. Shanghai had a population of 24,874,500 people in 2023 (making it the world's second-largest city after Chongqing), while its urban area was the most populous in China, with 29.87 million residents.
Gallery[]
